Panama scandal
The Panama scandal was a bribery scandal at the time of the Third French Republic at the end of the 19th century. He became known on September 6, 1892 through an article in the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole .
In 1879 a French company was founded to finance the construction of the Panama Canal under Ferdinand de Lesseps . The company filed for bankruptcy in 1889 and tried to improve its financial position through a lottery . The legal approval for this was u. a. Acquired by Lesseps partners Cornélius Herz and Baron Jacques de Reinach by bribing numerous politicians and journalists. The bankruptcy of the Compagnie de Panama was nevertheless inevitable. The French government initially kept the losses secret from shareholders , which, in addition to the corruption affair becoming known, led to a severe loss of confidence among the population.
The government under Prime Minister Émile Loubet (who was also Minister of the Interior) resigned on November 28, 1892. The subsequent government (Ribot I under Alexandre Ribot ) resigned on January 10, 1893 and the Ribot II government on March 30, 1893. The later Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was also involved in the scandal. At that time he was a member of the Var department in the National Assembly and lost after a smear campaign by various newspapers against him in the runoff election on September 3, 1893 against a candidate who was supported by left and right. But he was able to continue his political career.
Some Jewish financiers (Cornélius Herz, Jacques de Reinach, Émile Arton , Louis Andrieux ) were also involved in the Panama scandal , which fueled anti-Semitism in France.
The scandal did not destabilize the republic. This was probably due, among other things, to the fact that the Dreyfus affair took up the public's interest from November 1894 onwards. Favored by the rapid rise and growing influence of the French press , the Panama scandal promoted a politicization of the lower classes in particular.
literature
- Non-fiction
- Pierre A. Bourson: L'affaire Panama . Édition de Vecchi, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-7328-2977-3 .
- Jean Y. Mollier: Le scandal de Panama . Fayard, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-213-02674-2 .
- Matthew Parker: Panama fever. The battle to build the canal . Hutchinson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-09-179704-1 .
- Alex Schubert: Panama. History of a country and a canal . Wagenbach, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-8031-2048-9 .
- Fiction
- Maurice Barrès : Une journée parlementaire. Comédie de mœurs en trois actes . Charpentier & Fasquetier, Paris 1894.
- Wilhelm Herzog : Panama. Corruption, scandal, triumphs; a great human comedy . Bruckmann, Munich 1950 (first 1931).
- Eric Zencey: The Panama Affair. Historical novel . Translation Matthias Müller. Dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-20354-4 (English 1995)
- anti-Semitic literature
- Eberhard Wolfgang Möller : Panama scandal. Acting . Theater publisher Langen Müller, Berlin 1930.
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ Michel Winock (2007): Clemenceau . Editions Perrin ( ISBN 978-2-262-01848-1 ), chap. XII.
Footnotes
- ↑ see also fr: Gouvernement Alexandre Ribot (1) and (2)